A system architecture for ensuring interoperability in a South African national electronic health record system

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18489/sacj.v33i1.838

Abstract

ountries such as South Africa have attempted to leverage eHealth by digitising patients' medical records with the aim of improving the delivery of healthcare. This involves the use of an electronic health record (EHR) which is a longitudinal electronic record of a patient's information. The EHR includes all the patient's encounters that have been made with different health facilities. In the national context, the EHR is also known as a national EHR, which enables the sharing of patient information between points of care. However, a lack of interoperability exists between many South African health information systems making communication between these disparate systems impossible. As a result, the sharing of patient information is inhibited and the benefit of improving healthcare delivery cannot be realised. This paper proposes a system architecture for addressing interoperability challenges and indicates how interoperability can be ensured in a national EHR system. The proposed system architecture is differentiated from other national EHR system architectures found in the literature in order to emphasise its novelty. Secondary data obtained from a systematic literature review was analysed using content analysis, resulting in 9482 tags which informed the development of the proposed system architecture.

Author Biographies

Tamir Tsegaye, Rhodes University

Tamir Tsegaye received an MCom Information Systems (Distinction) from Rhodes University. He also holds a BCom (Honours) in Information Systems and a BCom in Information Systems (Cum Laude) from the University of Fort Hare.  His research interest is in the field of cybersecurity where he has published peer-reviewed papers and presented at international conferences.  He is a member of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists.

Stephen Flowerday, Rhodes University

Stephen Flowerday is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems at Rhodes University.  He is also the Head of Department.  He holds a BSc and an MBA, as well as a doctoral degree (IT).  His research interests lie in the field of cybersecurity, behavioural information security, and information security management. Over the last fourteen years, he has authored and co-authored in excess of 100 refereed publications and has presented papers in various countries.  Furthermore, he is a reviewer for conference publications, an editor and reviewer for a number of academic journals, and serves on various panels of the South African National Research Foundation (NRF).  Among others, he is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a member of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists.

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Published

2021-07-12

Issue

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2021)

Section

Research Papers (general)

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Copyright (c) 2021 Tamir Tsegaye, Stephen Flowerday

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